195
Views
29
CrossRef citations to date
0
Altmetric
Perspective

Estrogen, stress and the brain: progress toward unraveling gender discrepancies in major depressive disorder

Pages 967-973 | Published online: 09 Jan 2014

References

  • Weissman MM, Bland RC, Canino GJ et al. Cross-national epidemiology of major depression and bipolar disorder. JAMA276(4), 293–299 (1996).
  • Welch SS. A review of the literature on the epidemiology of parasuicide in the general population. Psychiatr. Serv.52(3), 368–375 (2001).
  • Breslau N, Chilcoat HD, Kessler RC, Peterson EL, Lucia VC. Vulnerability to assaultive violence: further specification of the sex difference in post-traumatic stress disorder. Psychol. Med.29, 813–821 (1999).
  • Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th Edition). American Psychiatric Association, DC, USA (2000).
  • Nolen-Hoeksema S. Sex differences in unipolar depression: evidence and theory. Psychol. Bull.101, 259–282 (1987).
  • Shors TJ, Leuner B. Estrogen-mediated effects on depression and memory formation in females. J. Affect. Disord.74, 85–96 (2003).
  • Gutierrez-Lobos K, Wolfl G, Scherer M, Anderer P, Schmidl-Mohl B. The gender gap in depression reconsidered: the influence of marital and employment status on the female/male ratio of treated incidence rates. Soc. Psychiatry Psychiatr. Epidemiol.35(5), 202–210 (2000).
  • Maier SF, Drugan RC, Grau JW. Controllability, coping behavior, and stress-induced analgesia in the rat. Pain12(1), 47–56 (1982).
  • Sakuma Y. Gonadal steroid action and brain sex differentiation in the rat. J. Neuroendocrinol.21(4), 410–414 (2009).
  • Halbreich U, Lumley LA. The multiple interactional biological processes that might lead to depression and gender differences in its appearance. J. Affect. Disord.29, 159–173 (1993).
  • Bebbington P, Dunn G, Jenkins R et al. The influence of age and sex on the prevalence of depressive conditions: report from the National Survey of Psychiatric Morbidity. Psychol. Med.28, 9–19 (1998).
  • Angst J, Gamma A, Gastpar M, Lepine JP, Mendlewicz J, Tylee A. Gender differences in depression. Epidemiological findings from the European DEPRES I and II studies. Eur. Arch. Psychiatry Clin. Neurosci.252(5), 201–209 (2002).
  • Ehlert U, Patalla U, Kirschbaum C, Piedmont E, Hellhammer DH. Postpartum blues: salivary cortisol and psychological factors. J. Psychosom. Res.34, 319–325 (1990).
  • Schmidt P, Berman K, Danaceau M, Keenan P, Nieman L, Rubinow D. Gonadal steroids, brain, and behavior. Biol. Psychiatry47, 5S (2000).
  • Schmidt PJ, Nieman L, Danaceau MA et al. Estrogen replacement in perimenopause-related depression: a preliminary report. Am. J. Obstet. Gynecol.183, 414–420 (2000).
  • Rubinow D, Schmidt P, Roca CA. Estrogen-serotonin interactions: implications for affective regulation. Biol. Psychiatry44, 839–850 (1998).
  • Turner RJ and Lloyd DA. Stress burden and the lifetime incidence of psychiatric disorder in young adults: racial and ethnic contrasts. Arch. Gen. Psychiatry61(5), 481–488 (2004).
  • Lechin F, Van der Dijs B, Benaim M. Stress versus depression. Prog. Neuropsychopharmacol. Biol. Psychiatry20(6), 899–950 (1996).
  • Batten SV, Aslan M, Maciejewski PK, Mazure CM. Childhood maltreatment as a risk factor for adult cardiovascular disease and depression. J. Clin. Psychiatry65(2), 249–254 (2004).
  • Rimar L, Rimar D. Depression, myocardial infarction and the immune system – the chicken before the egg problem. Harefuah143(1), 73–78 (2004).
  • Bruce ML. Psychosocial risk factors for depressive disorders in late life. Biol. Psychiatry52(3), 175–184 (2002).
  • Frodl TS, Koutsouleris N, Bottlender R et al. Depression-related variation in brain morphology over 3 years: effects of stress? Arch. Gen. Psychiatry65(10), 1156–1165 (2008).
  • Kronmuller KT, Pantel J, Kohler S et al. Hippocampal volume and 2-year outcome in depression. Br. J. Psychiatry192(6), 472–473 (2008).
  • Frodl T, Meisenzahl EM, Zetzsche T et al. Larger amygdala volumes in first depressive episode as compared to recurrent major depression and healthy control subjects. Biol. Psychiatry53(4), 338–344 (2003).
  • Botteron KN, Raichle ME, Drevets WC, Heath AC, Todd RD. Volumetric reduction in left subgenual prefrontal cortex in early onset depression. Biol. Psychiatry51(4), 342–344 (2002).
  • Drevets WC, Price JL, Simpson JRJ et al. Subgenual prefrontal cortex abnormalities in mood disorders. Nature386, 824–827 (1997).
  • Sapolsky RM. Glucocorticoids and hippocampal atrophy in neuropsychiatric disorders. Arch. Gen. Psychiatry57(10), 925–935 (2000).
  • Schmidt HD and Duman RS. The role of neurotrophic factors in adult hippocampal neurogenesis, antidepressant treatments and animal models of depressive-like behavior. Behav. Pharmacol.18(5–6), 391–418 (2007).
  • McEwen BS. The neurobiology of stress: from serendipity to clinical relevance. Brain Res.886(1–2), 172–189 (2000).
  • McGaugh JL. Memory – a century of consolidation. Science287(5451), 248–251 (2000).
  • Frodl T, Meisenzahl EM, Zetzsche T et al. Hippocampal changes in patients with a first episode of major depression. Am. J. Psychiatry159(7), 1112–1118 (2002).
  • McEwen BS. Plasticity of the hippocampus: adaptation to chronic stress and allostatic load. Ann. NY Acad. Sci.933, 265–277 (2001).
  • Conrad CD, Jackson JL, Wieczorek L et al. Acute stress impairs spatial memory in male but not female rats: influence of estrous cycle. Pharmacol. Biochem. Behav.78, 569–579 (2004).
  • Bowman RE. Stress-induced changes in spatial memory are sexually differentiated and vary across the lifespan. J. Neuroendocrinol.17(8), 526–535 (2005).
  • Mair RG, Burk JA, Porter MC. Lesions of the frontal cortex, hippocampus, and intralaminar thalamic nuclei have distinct effects on remembering in rats. Behav. Neurosci.112(4), 772–792 (1998).
  • Bowman RE, Zrull MC, Luine VN. Chronic restraint stress enhances radial arm maze performance in female rats. Brain Res.904(2), 279–289 (2001).
  • Bowman RE, Ferguson D, Luine VN. Effects of chronic restraint stress and estradiol on open field activity, spatial memory, and monoaminergic neurotransmitters in ovariectomized rats. Neuroscience113(2), 401–410 (2002).
  • Shors TJ, Chua C, Falduto J. Sex differences and opposite effects of stress on dendritic spine density in the male versus female hippocampus. J. Neuroscience21(16), 6292–6297 (2001).
  • Galea LA, McEwen BS, Tanapat P, Deak T, Spencer RL, Dhabhar FS. Sex differences in dendritic atrophy of CA3 pyramidal neurons in response to chronic restraint stress. Neuroscience81, 689–697 (1997).
  • Takuma K, Matsuo A, Himeno Y et al. 17β-estradiol attenuates hippocampal neuronal loss and cognitive dysfunction induced by chronic restraint stress in ovariectomized rats. Neuroscience146(1), 60–68 (2007).
  • Wright CI, Martis B, McMullin K, Shin LM, Rauch SL. Amygdala and insular responses to emotionally valenced human faces in small animal specific phobia. Biol. Psychiatry54(10), 1067–1076 (2003).
  • Hendler T, Rotshtein P, Yeshurun Y et al. Sensing the invisible: differential sensitivity of visual cortex and amygdala to traumatic context. Neuroimage19(3), 587–600 (2003).
  • Davis M. The role of the amygdala in fear and anxiety. Ann. Rev. Neurosci.15, 353–375 (1992).
  • Maren S, Quirk GJ. Neuronal signalling of fear memory. Nat. Rev. Neurosci.5(11), 844–852 (2004).
  • Maren S, De Oca B, Fanselow MS. Sex differences in hippocampal long-term potentiation (LTP) and Pavlovian fear conditioning in rats: positive correlation between LTP and contextual learning. Brain Res.661(1–2), 25–34 (1994).
  • Gupta RR, Sen S, Diepenhorst LL, Rudick CN, Maren S. Estrogen modulates sexually dimorphic contextual fear conditioning and hippocampal long-term potentiation (LTP) in rats (1). Brain Res.888(2), 356–365 (2001).
  • Toufexis DJ, Myers KM, Bowser ME, Davis M. Estrogen disrupts the inhibition of fear in female rats, possibly through the antagonistic effects of estrogen receptor α (ERα) and ERβ. J. Neurosci.27(36), 9729–9735 (2007).
  • Milad MR, Goldstein JM, Orr SP et al. Fear conditioning and extinction: influence of sex and menstrual cycle in healthy humans. Behav. Neurosci.120(6), 1196–1203 (2006).
  • Baran SE, Armstrong CE, Niren DC, Hanna JJ, Conrad CD. Chronic stress and sex differences on the recall of fear conditioning and extinction. Neurobiol. Learn. Mem.91(3), 323–332 (2009).
  • McEwen BS. Effects of adverse experiences for brain structure and function. Biol. Psychiatry48(8), 721–731 (2000).
  • Kaufer D, Ogle WO, Pincus ZS et al. Restructuring the neuronal stress response with anti-glucocorticoid gene delivery. Nat. Neurosci.7(9), 947–953 (2004).
  • Nicholas A, Munhoz CD, Ferguson D, Campbell L, Sapolsky R. Enhancing cognition after stress with gene therapy. J. Neurosci.26(45), 11637–11643 (2006).
  • Rodrigues SM, Sapolsky RM. Disruption of fear memory through dual-hormone gene therapy. Biol. Psychiatry65(5), 441–444 (2008).
  • Abrari K, Rashidy-Pour A, Semnanian S, Fathollahi Y. Post-training administration of corticosterone enhances consolidation of contextual fear memory and hippocampal long-term potentiation in rats. Neurobiol. Learn. Mem.91(3), 260–265 (2008).
  • Schatzberg AF, Posener JA, DeBattista C, Kalehzan BM, Rothschild AJ, Shear PK. Neuropsychological deficits in psychotic versus nonpsychotic major depression and no mental illness. Am. J. Psychiatry157(7), 1095–1100 (2000).
  • Goldman-Rakic PS. The prefrontal landscape: implications of functional architecture for understanding human mentation and the central executive. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. Biol. Sci.351, 1445–1453 (1996).
  • Robbins TW. Dissociating executive functions of the prefrontal cortex. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. Biol. Sci.351, 1463–1471 (1996).
  • Arnsten AF. Catecholamine and second messenger influences on prefrontal cortical networks of “representational knowledge”: a rational bridge between genetics and the symptoms of mental illness. Cereb. Cortex17(Suppl. 1), I6–I15 (2007).
  • Shansky RM, Glavis-Bloom C, Lerman D et al. Estrogen mediates sex differences in stress-induced prefrontal cortex dysfunction. Mol. Psychiatry9(5), 531–538 (2004).
  • Shansky RM, Rubinow K, Brennan A, Arnsten AF. The effects of sex and hormonal status on restraint-stress-induced working memory impairment. Behav. Brain Funct.2, 8 (2006).
  • Shansky RM, Bender G, Arnsten AF. Estrogen prevents norepinephrine α-2a receptor reversal of stress-induced working memory impairment. Stress (2008) (Epub ahead of print).
  • Shansky RM, Hamo C, Hof PR, McEwen BS, Morrison JH. Stress-induced dendritic remodeling in the prefrontal cortex is circuit specific. Cereb. Cortex doi:10.1093/cercor/bhp003 (2009) (Epub ahead of print).
  • Khan A, Brodhead AE, Schwartz KA, Kolts RL, Brown WA. Sex differences in antidepressant response in recent antidepressant clinical trials. J. Clin. Psychopharmacol.25(4), 318–324 (2005).
  • Moreno FA, McGahuey CA, Freeman MP, Delgado PL. Sex differences in depressive response during monoamine depletions in remitted depressive subjects. J. Clin. Psychiatry67(10), 1618–1623 (2006).
  • Kokras N, Antoniou K, Dalla C et al. Sex-related differential response to clomipramine treatment in a rat model of depression. J. Psychopharmacol. DOI:10.1177/0269881108095914 (2008) (Epub ahead of print).
  • Yang Y, Li W, Zhu B et al. Sex differences in antidepressant-like effect of chronic repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation in rats. Prog. Neuropsychopharmacol. Biol. Psychiatry31(3), 735–740 (2007).
  • Leuner B, Mendolia-Loffredo S, Shors TJ. Males and females respond differently to controllability and antidepressant treatment. Biol. Psychiatry56(12), 964–970 (2004).

Reprints and Corporate Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

To request a reprint or corporate permissions for this article, please click on the relevant link below:

Academic Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

Obtain permissions instantly via Rightslink by clicking on the button below:

If you are unable to obtain permissions via Rightslink, please complete and submit this Permissions form. For more information, please visit our Permissions help page.